Lance Armstrong's Heroism Is a Moral Inspiration

[underpants]

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr006=795o9ukvo3.app14b&page=NewsArticle&id=11247&news_iv_ctrl=1021

When Lance Armstrong rode through Paris on Sunday, crowning his unprecedented seventh consecutive victory in the grueling Tour de France, he put an exclamation mark on what is more than merely an extraordinary athletic career.

Why do sports have such an enormous, enduring appeal in human life?

The answer lies in a rarely recognized aspect of sports: their moral significance. What athletic victories provide is a rare and crucial moral value: the sight of human achievement.

Athletic competitions are staged with the goal of achieving victory. By their very nature, they seek and honor champions, i.e., those select few who, in a given field, outdistance their brothers and sisters. The result of this policy is that sports reward exceptional achievement, not equality; they glorify the elite, not the ordinary; they celebrate towering heroes, not "the little guy."

The motto of the Modern Olympic Games is: Citius, Altius, Fortius--Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Lance Armstrong embodies these principles perfectly. A great athlete like Armstrong is inspiring, because he reminds us how much is possible to a human being. He is living proof that an individual can reach great attainments and that profuse exertion in pursuit of a daunting goal need not be fruitless.

[underpants]

1. Harrumph

:kick:

[H5N1]

2. He is not a hero to me

Kucinich is my hero.
Gwen Moore is my hero.
Ted Rall is my hero.
Susan Sarandon is my hero because of her
humanitarian spirit across the board.


How can sports figures, actors and musicians
be considered heroes solely because they excel
at acting, music and sports?
(Tiger Woods, also mentioned in this article,
is not only not my hero - he is a selfish, immature,
poor-sport who reflects horribly on what it means to be a
man, let alone what it means to be role model.)

Lance may become my hero, but at this point he is far from it.

[ghostsofgiants]

3. It's from an Ayn Rand site

What else would you expect?